You wouldn’t know it given the cold snap Toronto experienced last week, but for pot lovers the May 24 long weekend marked the official start of weed-planting season. 

Under legalization, Canadians can grow up to four plants per household. And according to the latest sales data, Canadians are embracing the right to grow their own. The pandemic has not only seeded an explosion of interest in vegetable gardening. A whole new generation of Canadians is trying their hand at growing weed for the first time.

Cannabis seed sales have been growing steadily since they first entered the legal market in 2020, but the pandemic has sprouted a revolution of sorts.

A public consultation has been approved for Canada’s first Indigenous reserve-owned licensed cannabis shop to open a location in Merritt, B.C.

The owners of the proposed shop, the Williams Lake First Nation (WLFN) or T’exelcemc (people of WLFN) of the Secwepemc Nation, are already veterans of the cannabis business.

Canada is currently home to the largest legal adult-use cannabis industry on earth. The only other country that has legalized adult-use so far is Uruguay. Unfortunately, there are still unregulated markets.

Whereas Canada has a population of roughly 37.5 million people, Uruguay’s population is less than 1/10th of Canada’s (roughly 3.5 million people). In addition to a much larger population, Canada’s adult-use industry is open to anyone of legal age compared to Uruguay where only residents can make legal purchases. Canada’s legalization rollout was far from smooth, however, that was expected given the fact that Canada was essentially doing something that no other country had done before.

Elias Theodorou continues to break down barriers.

Last year, he became the first athlete in Canada to secure a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) for the use of medical cannabis in professional sport. He has now replicated that feat south of the border.

Health Canada says a "range of measures" are in place to combat abuse of its medical cannabis growing regulations, which have recently come under fire from the mayor of Leamington, Ont.

In a statement on Wednesday, the agency also said it is "committed to working with all stakeholders to address issues of concern with its programs."

Canadian natural fiber specialist Bast Fibre Technologies Inc. (BFTi) said it will use some of the $7 million it recently raised to develop a European manufacturing site as it focuses on ramping up production of fibers for non-woven products.

U.S. based private equity firm Merida Capital Holdings, New York, and existing investors provided the series A financing, which the company said will allow it to advance business beyond the R&D phase to full commercialization of its intellectual property in natural fiber processing.

“With this financing under our belt we can complete the final build out of our EU manufacturing site, continue the investment in our feedstock supply chain and enter full-scale commercialization,” said CEO Noel Hall.

These Canadian Marijuana Stocks Still Hold Value In The Market

With the start of the final week of May, marijuana stocks seem to be sustaining an upward push in the market. This current increase in momentum is setting a good pace for the start of June. Initially at the start of the month cannabis stock did not start to rise like they are now. Even with this current momentum shareholders need to see more consistency before ruling it a real recovery.

A Welsh man’s business selling illegally imported Canadian cannabis to patrons across the U.K. was busted after the smell of success proved too strong.

Bradley Furness, 26, is facing a suspended sentence after running what the prosecution referred to as a “pot distribution centre” from his home in Aberystwyth, Wales.

Suspicions were piqued in June 2017 when a worker at a postal centre noticed a distinctive odour wafting from a mail bag containing 52 similarly labeled padded envelopes, Wales Online reports. Inspectors opened the packages, which were each revealed to contain sealed packages of weed, alongside a polite “thank you” note.

“It’s bare-knuckle boxing out there. Canada’s first few years of cannabis legalization have been off to a pretty rocky start.”

So says the CEO of B.C.-based licensed producer Tantalus Labs Ltd., as he points to billion-dollar write-downs, massive corporate largesse, half-built mega-facilities sitting abandoned and low-grade supply outstripping demand as some of the deeper issues facing the legal cannabis industry.

“Today there are no consistently profitable cannabis cultivators – big or small – in Canada. Zero,” said Dan Sutton. “Tantalus Labs is a healthy and growing business, and we’ve delivered in multiple consecutive quarters. We are growing our business well and then we often have to pay upwards of 25% of our top line revenue in excise taxes.”